


Slippery Slopes and Other Logical Fallacies

by exfactor



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Clexa Week 2017, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 21:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10052636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exfactor/pseuds/exfactor
Summary: A fake fake-dating AU.





	

**Slippery Slopes and Other Logical Fallacies**  
  
"Lexa please." Clarke paces with a relentlessness that Lexa's never seen, absent maybe the night of her first gallery opening.  
  
"No." She figures it's best to just play it solidly cool. A simple 'no' repeated again and again should take care of things. It's pretty rare that it actually works, but Clarke's never attempted to convince her of something quite so daring and commitment-heavy.  
  
The pacing stops and Clarke kneels in front of her. She gives her the biggest, widest doe eyes imaginable, as if she's never wanted anything else from Lexa. As if these conversations don't happen on a weekly basis. Well, not quite conversations of this magnitude, but just the same, Clarke's as big a beggar as it gets.  
  
"Please." Her lip juts out and Lexa can't stand to look.  
  
It's just a quick glance and she's pretty sure Clarke doesn't even catch it, and then it's back to her book.  
  
"No." Same flat tone as before.  
  
Clarke heaves a sigh and throws herself on Lexa's bed, ruffling throw pillows and blankets and several brochures. "How many times are you going to say no?"  
  
"Every time you ask me," Lexa says with a turn of the page.  
  
Clarke leans over her shoulder, weight half on Lexa, victorious. "Ha! You didn't say no that time."  
  
Lexa shakes her head. It's not that she doesn't want to. Oh, she does. It's just that it's one of those slippery-slope type things. If she says yes, then she'll start the lie, if she lies enough her mind will believe it, if her mind believes it then she'll act on it, if she acts on it then she'll lose her.   
  
But slippery-slopes are a logical fallacy.  
  
That is, slippery slopes aren't supposed to work out, logically speaking. She should be perfectly capable of telling a small, little, teensy-tiny lie.   
  
But she's pretty sure in this case, in the case of her and Clarke, that slippery slope wouldn't be a logical fallacy. At least from her end of things. (From her end of things, 'logic' and 'Clarke' just don't fit together.) And she just can't afford to start the slide that she knows will take her so far down.  
  
"I didn't say yes."  
  
Clarke's worked her way into sitting atop her back now, ready to strike a winning pose. Lexa imagines her curling her biceps, showing her muscles off like a championship wrestler. "You literally just said the word yes." It's a shout and Lexa's grateful that it's the middle of a Saturday afternoon or she'd hear a thumping against the wall and a 'Pipe that girl down!' from her near-deaf neighbors. Only Clarke can get them riled up. (Maybe it's because only Clarke comes to visit.)  
  
"Ok, but not in response to your initial question."  
  
"Why?" she throws her head into the back of Lexa's neck with a faux sob.  
  
It's too much for her. She can feel herself on that slippery slope sliding slowly. She firms her jaw. It's rare, but Clarke's seen this side of her before. "Just, no, Clarke."  
  
She feels Clarke sit up, give pause. She imagines Clarke is probably biting her lip, wondering how to play things, wondering if Lexa's for real. She wishes Clarke could read into it just a bit more, could read into her adamance, her forcefulness. She wishes she could say everything to Clarke without any risk at all.  
  
"Ok ok ok. I'm sorry."  
  
Clarke gently gets up and Lexa tracks her picking the brochures up off the bed, one eye on her book, the other on Clarke. She hopes Clarke doesn't notice. Otherwise, she might think she still has an 'in.'  
  
"But why?" another sobbing, melodramatic question, this time accompanied by several vigorous gestures at the brochure pictures. "You know this is like the most beautiful island in the world, right? And you know that I'm willing to pay for both of us, right? I don't see what the problem is."  
  
The one eye on the book thing must not have worked, cause Clarke's back at it and Lexa feels herself slowly pulled down. She sits up so that her back is against the headboard, her eyes fully on Clarke. No more attacks from behind. This time Clarke will see the set of her jaw, the seriousness in her steely eyes.  
  
"I'm sorry that I have a moral aversion to false representation." It's delivered perfectly. None of that warbly voice she sometimes gets around Clarke, especially when she's been drinking or when she's nervous.  
  
Clarke abandons the brochures again and sits on the bed across from Lexa. She thought this would be a strategic position, but with the way Clarke's eyes bore into her, she feels like there's no escape. "I knew your lawyer jargon would come into this at some point. We're not doing anything illegal." Her voice pitches up at the end and Lexa can't help her smirk. Clarke catches it. She must. Because she reaches out her hands and grabs Lexa's and wiggles her head this way and that so that Lexa is forced to meet her eyes, forced to smile.  
  
Slippery Slope Clarke Griffin is what she should call her. Those eyes are meant to pull her down and be her ruin.  
  
She has to steel herself. Her heart. It's for her own good. And Clarke's, too. She wants to emerge from this conversation friendship in tact.  
  
"It's not lawyer jargon. This is about what I think is fundamentally right and wrong." It sounds right enough. She did pay a ton of money to go to law school, so she's basically an expert in bullshittery. And Clarke usually will buy into her bullshittery, too.  
  
"And going to the most beautiful place in the world for free is fundamentally wrong? I can't help that this is a couples resort and I don't have a second person to complete my couple. I just want my best friend to come with me on a vacation."  
  
"It's how we're representing ourselves to others that I think is wrong. I don't like lying." Clarke knows this. Lexa doesn't lie. She's George Washington-esque, if that story about the cherry tree is even true. Lexa knows she could get lost in the irony of that one.  
  
The lying retort sinks in enough for Clarke lose ground. Clarke's flattened. Her hands drop from Lexa's, her eyes look past her, she sighs heavily again and again. It's enough to make Lexa feel bad. It's enough for her to remember that a slippery slope isn't slippery at all. And it's probably not even a slope.  
  
"So what can I do to get you to come along?"  
  
Lexa gulps. This Clarke is dangerous. She's suddenly vulnerable and sad and Lexa's done some regrettable things for sad, vulnerable Clarke.  
  
"Just...," her hands find her hair and twist through it. It's her tell. "Find someone else."  
  
Lexa moves to get up and Clarke reaches out for her hand again.  
  
"I don't want anyone else."  
  
And if she hasn't been waiting to hear these words for what feels like her entire life. She refuses to meet Clarke's eyes. Another gulp. She can't help it.  
  
"No, Clarke."  
  
Another heaving sigh.  
  
"Back to this, huh?"  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
Things have gotten too serious and she feels like she's suffocating. Another gulp. She stands and glances at the door.  
  
"What if it wasn't a lie?"  
  
It's so quiet, she's not sure Clarke's said anything at all. She turns back to look at Clarke. She's prepared for a huge grin, for a tackle into her fluffy comforter, for a 'gotcha.'  
  
She stares at the back of Clarke's head, instead, as she whispers, "What if what wasn't a lie?"  
  
"Our relationship." Clarke turns on the bed, eyes looking up to find Lexa's, still whispering, "What if it wasn't a lie?"  
  
Lexa gulps again. Nervous reaction. A hand smooths a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm not following."  
  
"What if we were actually dating?" Clarke's voice is a little more sure this time, eyes still on Lexa. Lexa feels her breath speed up.  
  
"Still not following."  
  
"I'm not sure how to make it any more clear." This time Clarke stands, reaches for that hand again. Lexa feels her feet at the edge of the slope, toes curled against the ledge, scant fractions of an inch from sliding. "Do you want to go on a date with me?"  
  
She can't make eye contact. It can't be real. Clarke loves a good joke and, while this feels particularly cruel to Lexa, there's no way that she can let Clarke in on that. "To a beautiful couples resort for free and we'll pretend to be in a relationship so that we can eat posh food and hang out on posh beaches and..." She tosses a few of the brochures from the bed for effect.  
  
"Stop. No. Right here, right now." Clarke grabs both her hands this time. There's no hint of a smile or a gleam in her eye. "Do you want to go on a date with me?"  
  
Lexa's eyes dart between Clarke's eyes and her lips and the brochures and the door. "What? Where? Why?" Her brain races and she can't help another gulp. Damn her nervous tics and the way that Clarke seems to hone right in on them.  
  
"I don't know. We can make dinner and watch a movie. You always have the ingredients for spaghetti and we didn't drink that bottle of wine the other night."  
  
Lexa can feel her mouth open, but the motor functioning of her jaw feels fully out of her control. If he was here right now, her dad would make some corny dad joke about catching flies. But he's not here. (Thank god. It could be worse.) And she's fully on the slope now, slipping and sliding down and down and down. Her open mouth provides enough resistance to give her a moment's thought, at least.  
  
"That doesn't answer the why," she says, finally, as if logic is prevailing at the moment. "And it can't be so that we can go on this vacation."  
  
"Well, I do like you, you know."  
  
She's seen Clarke look at her like this before. Her eyes look up just a little, catching and holding Lexa's attention. Her mouth parts slightly and her tongue darts out to wet her lips briefly. Her lip twitches and her eyes blink, but she doesn't stray.  
  
Lexa has to write it off. Self-preservation above all else. This is the way friends talk to one another. This is the way friends touch one another. This is the way friends look at one another.  
  
"Yeah, you're my best friend. I like you, too."  
  
"You're being dense."  
  
No, no, no. Obtuseness is her savior in these situations. Clarke's not supposed to call her out on it. Let sleeping dogs lie and whatnot, right?  
  
After refusal and logic and obtuseness comes humor. "Well that's not the way to earn a date with me, even if it is just spaghetti that  _I'll_  be cooking." Humor isn't often her default, but maybe it'll save her this time.  
  
"Come on."  
  
"Am I supposed to be taking this seriously, Clarke? We've known each other what, four years? In that time there has never been any hint of romantic feelings."  
  
Clarke withdraws and starts toward the kitchen. From the other room, Lexa hears her raised voice.  
  
"Maybe there have been some hints and you've just ignored them."  
  
"Like what?" She's following like a puppy. No sleeping dogs. She just keeps pushing.  
  
Clarke's pulled down the pasta and the sauce and set each on the counter. She pauses when she sees Lexa at the threshold. She looks at her again. That look again. That look that Lexa's seen before, but it feels different this time.  
  
"Like four years ago, when I first met you and I couldn't stop looking at you, at your eyes, at your smile, at that tattoo on your arm. Or three years ago, when Finn broke up with me and I made you cuddle with me every night. Or two years ago, when we both got a little drunk on New Years and..."  
  
"We don't talk about that." With good reason, Lexa thinks. Very good reason. She just about spontaneously combusted on that night. And for many, many months after. She couldn't look Clarke in the eye, couldn't be in the same room alone with her, even. Time helped things. And law school. She could beg off by saying she had to study or write a paper or meet up with her study group.  
  
"Why don't we? We kissed. A lot. I saw your boobs. You saw mine. There. I said it. I've thought about it since then. But you always seemed so closed off to everything after that and I just let it all die down, " Clarke's cheeks are red and her voice is raised and Lexa hasn't seen this Clarke in some time. "I'm sorry that I tried to make you pretend to be my girlfriend so that I could go on this awesome trip, but I like spending time with you and since it feels so impossible to be your actual girlfriend, I just figured maybe there'd be no problem trying to pretend. I'm sorry I got it so wrong, Lexa."  
  
She wants to lean against the doorway and bang her head into it over and over and over again. How could she have gotten Clarke so wrong? Why is she such a coward? Why did she waste so much time in her own head?  
  
Instead, she just leans her head against the doorway and closes her eyes.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me?" She hates how pathetic her voice sounds.  
  
She opens her eyes to see Clarke right beside her. "Tell you what?"  
  
"That...all this stuff....Really?" So fucking pathetic.  
  
"Really what?"  
  
Clarke puts her hand on Lexa's shoulder and Lexa jumps. She almost chokes on a breath.  
  
She feels her brow furrow and her face twist up and she hopes to all that is holy that she won't cry. It's happened in more embarrassing moments. And Clarke's seen her cry before, but it's got to be the pinnacle of patheticness if you cry when your friend tells you she likes you (even if you've been pining for that friend for years). "You really think of me, thought of me like that? Like you liked me? Like liked me?"  
  
"Yeah. Still do, even if I've been trying to get rid of this feeling for the past year or so." The hand on her shoulder turns into Clarke's body molding into hers, chin resting on her shoulder, hands around her waist.  
  
Lexa finally ventures a look and regrets it immediately. Clarke's eyes are just right there. She's dreamt of this.  
  
"Really?" she sobs out. The pinnacle of patheticness.  
  
"You're impossible," Clarke says as she nudges her nose into Lexa's neck.  
  
Lexa heaves a sigh worth four years of pining. Clarke, her Clarke, has just asked her on a date. A date.  
  
She shakes her head and breathes deeply.  
  
Reset.  
  
"Where's the spaghetti?" she says with the quirk of a smile, as she digs her fingers into Clarke's sides. "Get your computer, look up flights. Get that wine. What movie should we put on - do you like Love Actually?"  
  
Clarke bites her lip to tame her widening smile.  
  
"Really?" Clarke holds on to her tight.  
  
And Lexa won't let her go either. "No you - really?"  
  
"Really."


End file.
